Maybe you found this blog while searching for texts related to physics, maths and/or one of the scientists named Bernoulli. Though, every now and then, I might write about maths, the main scope concerns the world of chess problems - views, experiences, pleasures, moments of frustration (indeed!). In most cases, posts are about solving, constructing, enjoying chess compositions.

31 August 2012

Time flies and I don't recall anymore how it happened. Anyway, roughly at the same time I looked into Rusinek's compositions (see here and here), I also learnt that the English problemist Charles Michael Bent composed a lot of endgame studies featuring underpromotions. Quite interesting, I thought. So, that's the subject for today.

your web browser and/or your host do not support iframes as required to display the chessboard
your web browser and/or your host do not support iframes as required to display the chessboard
your web browser and/or your host do not support iframes as required to display the chessboard
your web browser and/or your host do not support iframes as required to display the chessboard
Next, a rather rare example of the underpromotion to a bishop.

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Of course, there is also the promotion to a knight.

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your web browser and/or your host do not support iframes as required to display the chessboard

24 August 2012

Almost exactly one year ago, I wrote about the challenge to provide nice diagrams for chess problems to be used in a blog or other web pages. In the meantime, the tool pgn4web which I also discussed has made more progress. Already since March this year it provides full support for game variations. That's great!

Therefore, in this and all blog posts to come, I will make use of this software — as far as possible. When it comes to fairy chess problems, I have to fall back on the well-proven method of using those generated images that you've seen so far.

From now on, you'll be able to play through all the moves with ease. No additional chessboard is required and no trouble anymore trying to imagine the whole solution while your eyes constantly wander between board and notation. Let's see how it looks like.

your web browser and/or your host do not support iframes as required to display the chessboard
This iframe was automatically created and I could cut&paste it. The only thing to do was to provide a PGN text which I modified a little bit, so that the header looks quite the way we expect it. There are many configuration options to change nearly every part of the output. And even those who see this result later have many possibilities. Hover your mouse slowly over the squares and learn what features can be activated by clicking. Of course, not all of them are applicable to these simple "games" that represent the chess compositions.

Okay, at first, it's all really exciting. But after a while you'll find out what's the drawback with this procedure. The generated HTML code for the iframe can't be modified directly. Hence, in case of an error or if, for instance, you want to add some comments, you have to reload the information in the board generator, make the desired or necessary changes there, generate the code and cut&paste it again. That can be annoying, especially when you have to do it more often. Of course, it would be better to use the whole set of JavaScript files that is provided by Paolo Casaschi, the author of the pgn4web package. But that would require a web space, etc.

10 August 2012

Regarding endgame studies there are only two stipulations: Win or Draw. Concentrating on the latter, we see that there are different ways to achieve this aim. One of them is the stalemate. While I looked for some interesting examples I came across the works of the Polish Grandmaster of chess composition Jan Rusinek. Rather by chance I found out that in the 1970s he turned his attention to a special type of stalemate and that he published the article Stalemate by pinning in the middle of the board in the problem magazine EG (issue 51, June 1978).

In a previous post I've already shown you an endgame study by Rusinek that is one of his better known compositions and which features a nice stalemate. Now you get to see some more of them. Just for the sake of completeness: All of the following studies are composed by Jan Rusinek and have the stipulation White to move and draw. Additionally, we know that the main line ends with a stalemate.

03 August 2012

Domination is a theme you can find in many endgame studies. It occurs when a piece has a relatively wide choice of destination squares, but nevertheless cannot avoid being captured. I'll show you some examples.